Hitler and Eva

Did Adolf Hitler marry a Jewish woman?
DNA tests ‘show Eva Braun associated
with Ashkenazi Jews’
The Dead Famous DNA film tested
hair samples which are said to have come
from a hairbrush used by Hitler's secret
lover and discovered at his mountain
retreat
Adolf Hitler with Eva Braun, whose
relationship with him was a state secret
By ADAM SHERWIN
Saturday 05 April 2014
Eva Braun, Adolf Hitler ’s long-term lover
who married the Nazi leader hours before
their joint suicide in his Berlin bunker,
may have had Jewish ancestry, ground-
breaking DNA testing has found.
DNA analysis of hair samples from a
hairbrush claimed to belong to Braun
suggests that the fascist dictator
responsible for the murder of millions of
Jews may have unwittingly married a
woman of semitic descent, in one of his
final acts as the Third Reich crumbled.
The revelation appears in a Channel 4
documentary, Dead Famous DNA ,
broadcast next week, in which leading
scientists attempt to extract DNA from
relics and analyse their genome to solve
mysteries associated with them.
Forensic scientists sequenced the
hypervariable region of the mitochondrial
DNA from a sample of hairs extracted
from a monogrammed hairbrush found at
the end of the Second World War in
Braun’s apartment at Hitler’s Alpine
residence, the Berghof in Bavaria, by an
American army intelligence officer.
They found a specific sequence within the
mitochondrial DNA, a small genome
within the mitochondria of the cell that is
passed down the maternal line from
mother to daughter unchanged over the
generations, belonging to haplogroup
N1b1, which is associated with Ashkenazi
Jews.
A haplogroup is a particular sequence of
mitochondrial DNA which is passed down
the maternal line and according to
traditional Jewish law, Judaism is passed
down through matrilineal descent.
Photography assistant Braun fell madly in
love with Hitler at just 17-years-old,
although he was twenty-three years her
senior. Hitler ordered his private
secretary Martin Bormann to investigate
Braun’s family, who sent Eva to a Catholic
school, to ensure that they were “Aryan”
and that she had no Jewish ancestors.
After being assured there were none, the
courtship advanced.
But Hitler, fearful that the relationship
would harm his public image, refused to
marry Eva and kept her a state secret,
hidden away at his mountain-top
residence, the Berghof.
Channel 4 used hair initially recovered in
the summer of 1945 by Paul Baer, a US 7th
Army captain, who was posted to the
Berghof and took personal items,
including the hairbrush, from Braun’s
private apartment. There are photographs
of Baer at the Berghof in 1945 and the
hairbrush has been authenticated by
experts.
Baer’s son sold Braun’s hairbrush to a
relic dealer who separated the hair and
sold it on to hair dealer John Reznikoff.
Dead Famous DNA presenter Mark Evans
bought eight strands of the hair from
Reznikoff for $2,000. The hair was then
sent to an international team of forensic
scientists for analysis.
A Channel 4 spokesman said: “In the
nineteenth century, many Ashkenazi Jews
in Germany converted to Catholicism, so
Eva Braun is highly unlikely to have
known her ancestry and - despite research
he instigated into Braun’s race - neither
would Hitler.”
Whilst the results will provide a talking
point, they are not definitive. To prove
that the hair came from Eva Braun’s head,
Mr Evans attempted to get a DNA swab
from one of Braun’s two surviving female
descendants, but both refused.
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C4 criticised for paying Holocaust denier
for lock of Hitler's hair
An attempt by the producers to procure
Hitler’s hair ended in embarrassment
when it emerged that clippings sold by
controversial historian David Irving to
Channel 4 for £3,000 turned out to be
fake.
Mr Evans said: “This is a thought-
provoking outcome - I never dreamt that I
would find such a potentially
extraordinary and profound result.
Racism & Fascism – ideas that one racial
group is superior to another – made a
mockery of by studying dead famous
DNA.”
Hitler and Braun became lovers in 1932
when Eva was 20, although Hitler insisted
that they never show the slightest
affection in public. They were married in
a small civil ceremony within the
Führerbunker in the early hours of April
29, 1945, witnessed by Bormann and
Joseph Goebbels.
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The following day, as the Soviet Army
advanced upon Berlin, Eva, 32, bit into a
cyanide capsule. Hitler took poison and
shot himself in the temple. Afterwards,
the two bodies were laid side by side,
doused with petrol and burnt.